Chapter 19
NOVA
Three months later, Deion picked me up at four, my totes already in my arms when he pulled up. He looked them, then at me, took the bags without a word, and set them carefully in the back seat on top of his jacket so it wouldn’t slide.
I spent the first part of the drive nervous as hell. By the time we hit the turnpike, I was thinking about my mom.
Celeste James had played rooms all over the city and a few outside it, and she had never once, as far as I knew, walked into one without knowing exactly what she was bringing with her. That wasn’t helping me now, but I held on to it anyway, turning it over, looking for something useful in it.
What I held on to was this. She had been nervous before every set.
She told me that once when I was fifteen, standing in the kitchen while she was getting ready to leave.
I had asked her why she was putting on makeup twice.
She said, I’m nervous, baby. I looked at her like that didn’t make sense, and she met my eyes in the mirror and said, About whether the room is going to let me in.
Every time, she said. Nervous every single time. The shaking means you care. The day your hands stop shaking is the day you stop giving a damn about the room.
My hands were shaking. Good. That meant I hadn’t made the mistake of deciding in advance that I already knew what the room needed, the mistake that turned DJs into jukeboxes.
I had been in the space three times before opening.
Once for the acoustic assessment with David.
Another to hear the panels after installation while standing in the center as Yolanda watched me listen like it was part of the work.
And once alone, on a Tuesday, when the room was empty and I stood there for forty minutes doing nothing before I tested the sound but feeling it, the way my mom taught me, not with my ears but with my body, letting the room come to me before I decided anything about it.
David had done what he said he would. The panels broke up the sound bouncing off the brick and the bar.
The monitors sat at seated ear height, angled toward the room.
The bass held evenly from the bar to the back wall and across to the listening alcove along the east side, three chairs and a small table with a rotating selection from the vinyl wall.
My wall. The one I had built piece by piece. That was the part I carried.
The playing was mine. I had been doing that alone on the third floor of my home with the needle down, reading what came next.
The wall was different. It was public and made a statement about what belonged together, what mattered, and why.
And once you made that kind of statement out loud, you had to stand in it.
I’d built it for a room I hadn’t played but understood.
Yolanda met me inside, looked at the bags, and pointed me toward the booth.
I set up both Technics, aligned the cartridges, checked the pitch.
Jean Carne came first and the room found its footing with “Was That All It Was?” at the front, because the room needed to feel assured before anything else.
Loose Ends, “Hangin’ on a String,” because opening night needed movement.
Anita Baker, “Caught Up in the Rapture,” because devotion that trusted itself was the point.
Meshell Ndegeocello, “Outside Your Door,” because I had seen Deion in that room already and knew exactly what I wanted to say without saying it.
I didn’t look at him when I played it. I didn’t need to, but I felt when he found it.
When the record ended, I looked up. He touched two fingers to his chest, just once, then dropped his hand.
Then I played “Adore.” Seven minutes of royalty meets worship that I’ve appreciated for years, but never quite felt it like I did through my headphones that day when I recognized I was now living inside those lyrics.
When it played, the room went still and conversations fell away. A woman at the bar closed her eyes and stayed there until the last note.
That was the moment my mother had always talked about, when the music stopped being something the room heard and became something the room held.
For the last record, I reached for Phyllis Hyman.
“Old Friend.” I stood between the decks and let it fill everything, my mother’s record in a room she had never stepped into, her ear in every choice I had made.
When I lifted the needle, Deion was already at the foot of the stairs with his hand held out, extended toward me.
I took it. He looked at me for a long moment, then kissed my forehead, that tall-man gesture, quiet and certain, but tender at its core.
Then his eyes met mine and something flashed behind them.
I remained two steps above him but still had to tilt my head a tad when he moved to place a long, lingering kiss on my lips.
He then took the totes from my shoulder, guiding me the rest of the way to solid ground, where I landed beside him and said, “Let’s go home. ”